AMD Radeon HD 7990 May Arrive in Late July, in Limited Quantities

Advanced Micro Devices is getting ready to release its dual-chip flagship graphics card code-named New Zealand sometime in late July. The device will not only be late to market as its main competitor, the GeForce GTX 690, has been available for over two months now, but will also be launched in limited quantities. Still, for the fans of the Radeon, AMD is rumoured to prepare a 12GB version of the graphics card.

AMD Radeon HD 7990 graphics card is expected to carry two Tahiti XT (Radeon HD 7970) graphics processing units (GPUs) and 6GB of GDDR5 memory onboard. Thanks to two AMD Tahiti XT graphics chips, the dual-chip graphics solution will have 4096 stream processors, 256 texture units, 64 render back ends and so on. The novelty will have some kind of Turbo mode that will clock the chips higher when thermal design power allows as well as will probably support certain exclusive features in order to clearly distinguish itself from Nvidia Corp's GeForce GTX 690. What is surprising is that AMD is working on a special version of the graphics card with 12GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory onboard, reports VR-Zone web-site.

Unfortunately, it is now rumoured that the code-named New Zealand dual-GPU flagship from AMD will be available only in limited quantities in July. Given the fact that the price of the graphics card is unknown, just like exact specification, it is unclear how exactly limited the availability will be. For example, the demand for GeForce GTX 690 for $999 is clearly not as high as it was on the Radeon HD 6990 for $699 a year ago, hence, there is no need to make them in huge quantities.

Based on unofficial information, AMD intended to launch its Radeon HD 7990 sometimes in the second quarter of this year, just in time to compete face-to-face against GeForce GTX 690. But AMD preferred to change its plans, delay the dual-chip flagship product and re-launch Radeon HD 7970 with 1GHz GPU clock-speed in June instead.